KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Cynthia Aasen: Real Estate Secrets for Generational Wealth

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Summary:Unlock the closely guarded real estate secrets of Cynthia Aasen, a seasoned expert with over 25 years of experience in helping individuals and institutions build high-performance investment portfolios. This episode delves into her specialized insights on real estate syndication, multifamily value-add strategies, and private equity investments. Discover how Cynthia's deep due diligence, turn-key solutions, and powerful network are transforming ordinary investments into avenues for substantial wealth and peace of mind.Bullet Point TakeawaysMastering Investment Real Estate: Learn from Cynthia Aasen's 25+ years of exclusive focus on investment real estate opportunities, including syndication, development, and multi-family value-add strategies across North America.The Power of Private Equity Real Estate: Discover how private equity investments, now a significant portion of global assets, can enhance your financial strategy and offer access to lucrative opportunities in high-growth markets for annual returns ranging from 7-20%.Turn-Key Solutions for Investors: Understand Cynthia's philosophy of providing "true" turn-key solutions where "you invest, we'll do the rest." This involves thorough due diligence and a network of expert professionals dedicated to maximizing returns and mitigating risk.Navigating the 3 Tradeable Assets: Cynthia emphasizes that success hinges on effectively managing our three tradeable assets: time, money, and peace of mind, ensuring investments perform well after purchase to protect these assets.Building a Network of Experts: Learn the importance of cultivating a network of top developers and expert professionals specializing in debt acceleration, risk mitigation, and purpose-built rental properties to unlock exclusive, high-performance investment options.Topics:Cynthia Aasen Real EstateReal Estate Investment SecretsPrivate Equity Real EstateMultifamily Value-AddGenerational Wealth Real EstateCall-to-Action:Ready to unlock the secrets to building generational wealth through real estate? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and learn from Cynthia Aasen's unparalleled expertise!

Well, we are super stoked to announce our next speaker. She's an absolute beast in the real estate investment space. Cynthia Aeson of Cynthia Aeson with her private equity firm. She's been in the real estate space for over 30 plus years. Has created many, many, many massively successful, wealthy real estate investors across North America. Is a mother to three amazing kids from Saskatchewan. She's a Canadian from Saskatchewan and beautiful Prairie. which I just came back from.

And she's going to share in terms of her offering, how you can get involved with her and partner with her and different investment opportunities across North America and Canada as well, obviously. And we are super stoked to invite Cynthia to the table. So Cynthia, come on up. Wow, after an introduction like that, I can hardly wait to hear what I have to say. Awesome. Well, listen, I'll leave you to it.

Okay, and we're super stoked to hear from you. Thank you for the great introduction. Hey, this is such a great group, and I've known Phil, Randy, met this new person, Tony, that just presented. Amazing story, but very relatable. I'm a mom of three, as you said. I've been involved in the real estate business for many years. So I just want to touch on private equity real estate. That's my focus now. I have been in the real estate business, showing, moving around, doing real estate transactions, and in 2012, I kind of shifted my focus. I wanted to bring people into the other side, the beginning part of the real estate transaction. So I basically started raising

money for a number of different developers. Just a little bit about me, 30 plus years in the business. I'm registered as a dealing representative with an exempt market dealer, and I'm also licensed through EXP as an associate broker. Our company, Integrated Equities, what I'm going to talk about today, is a boutique firm. Private equity can be all sorts of capital raise.

It can be crypto, it can be cannabis, I mean, high tech, it can be startups. But we are, our lane is, as Randy said, stick to your lane,

do what you know, which is real estate. So I raise money for developers that build real estate. Our team is dedicated to sourcing lucrative deals so that they can help everyone build generational wealth in real estate. And ultimately our goal and our job is to source these deals, do our homework, conduct thorough due diligence, and make sure what they're giving you as information on how the business plan is going to work is real. So that's our role and helping and identifying people that are interested in it and helping them make the right informed decisions.

So how does it work? Well, like brokerages that do real estate transactions with clients to facilitate that purchase, Integrated Equities, Acts helps you subscribe or invest in private companies. And through that process, there's a whole bunch of layers, compliance, reporting, due diligence. I'm a dealing representative. So what I do is I basically, help get to know you. Is this something you should be investing in? And I help you subscribe or invest in that company. So what is private equity? Well, really, it's just companies that are looking for capital so that they can grow their business. So we try to find companies that have a proven track record. They've exited multiple times. Now they need to

scale their business, which I think we're talking about, scaling your business, and they need more capital to do that. A lot of them have done it many, many times with just friends and family, and now they're moving into another category to expand and grow their business. So that's private equity. So when I talk to clients, I try to say to them, you know, what is private equity? How does it fit in my financial portfolio? Well, we have our real estate holdings. We buy our homes, we live, and then we buy rental properties, we get mortgages. Those are considered non-financial assets. What is a financial asset is your cash, your GICs, your bonds, your mutual funds, your stocks, crypto, bullion, private equity fits into that category. And it should be a part of everyone's

financial portfolio. It fits in there. You know, RSPs, registered accounts. I have a lot of clients that love real estate. That's why I got into this. They're saying, you know, I really want to put my money to work inside my registered account. And how do I do that with real estate? Well, you can do mortgages, you can do private lending, but it's not that easy to do. Our product is really simple to do that. So focus, real estate, private equity. We deal with multifamily, we deal with self-storage, we deal with open-air retail in the U.S., we have real estate investment trusts, we have mutual fund trusts. So there's a variety of different types that you can select from. Here's the companies we represent. We represent

eight developers that are Canadian developers that are either in the U.S. or in Canada, and they're doing real estate development. Six of these eight are focused on purpose-built rental. That's where we see the opportunity in Canada. Unless you haven't been watching the news, there's a lot of money pouring into that sector because it's very unaffordable to have housing. So that's where we're focused in terms of this. The annual returns are anywhere from 7 to 20% plus. Obviously, the higher the risk, you have to know, the higher the returns, probably some risk factor that you should factor into. These are your most common structures. So you have the limited partnership structure, which is a general partner and limited partners. The general partner is the developer, and they're taking on

all the liability. The limited partners are the investors, and you're providing that working capital. You're passive. You're limited to what you put into the deal in terms of loss. Key characteristics. Well, people always say, how is this different than the stock market? Well, it's passive, hands off, which I think the stock market is. There's no mortgage required. So for all the realtors out there that work with real estate clients that are interested in investing in real estate, this might be something they would consider, maybe for their registered account. There's no mortgage required. So they may have run out. that mortgage wall, they can't get any more financing, but they still like real estate. A lot of the funds that we work with are tax advantage. So that means that when you get your

money back, they're either treating it differently for tax purposes, whether it's return of capital, capital gains, even though it's income from residential properties, which the real estate investment trusts do. We've tried to reach everybody. So we started with a very low minimum, which is unusual. Mostly when people are talking private equity, they're looking at a minimum of 100 to 200,000 to start. So we've dropped the minimum and we've created a very streamlined approach to processing the subscription so we can do that. It's eligible for registered accounts and now you're going to be able to invest in an apartment building, have an interest in an actual real estate development, which I'm going to touch on a case study of a current one that we're

working on so you understand how this all works. So some of the things to just keep in mind, you know, what should you be looking for when you try to assess these? They're usually called units or shares or they have different classes, different series. So how are you going to get paid? When do you get paid? That's really important. These terms, Perry Passu comes up all the time and that just means you are equally sharing the paydown. So you're not being ranked lower or higher. Dilution risk. What if there's a cash call? Is your interest diluted. And we work with issuers that we don't want that to happen. So we create documentation and process that protects our investors. And then voting rights, because that's how, that's the

only way you can influence the outcome of many of these deals is what is your rights and obligations and you're voting. So priority ranking, are you getting paid first? Are you getting paid third? That's important. What are the fees? What are the frequency of payments? I want to earn annual income. I need it monthly, but I need it monthly. Okay, well, then there's different ways that we can structure that. Taxation. It's not what you make, it's what you keep. And that is really important when it comes to structuring your financial portfolio.

So all of this information is contained in the offering documents. Our team will work with issuers and make recommendations so that they can attract capital because they put in more favorable treatment for the investors. This is a repayment of capital. So ultimately what we're looking at here is, how do I get my money? When do I get my money? We're going to talk about a deal today in the case study,

and this is how it works. Debt's obligations, contracts, anything comes first. That gets paid out first of any deal. Then are you next? That's what you want to make sure. I'm next. And better yet, do I have a preferred return? Which means the developer is saying,

hey, until you get to 10% annualized, we don't take any share of that. And then you split it with the general partner in this case. That's what this looks like. One of the things that I heard when I started in this industry was, oh, yeah, we invested in that 10 years ago. We haven't heard from them since. We're not getting any information. I don't even know where it is. It's in my RSP. I don't know how to reach them. So our mandate as a team is reporting. We do it quarterly at minimum, usually monthly, audited financial statements annually, and there's always a way to track the performance and we connect them directly to the issuer so they can reach out and speak to the person in charge. We don't filter the information. How is it valued? Well, depending on the offering,

and that's what we discuss when I sit down with my clients. This is a multifamily building. They're going to value it on appraisal. But what does the appraisal look at? On a multifamily building, it's net operating income that's a value, that business, how much business, net income does that business generate? That'll give it a value. And in space of multifamily, let's just use that as an example, there's called a capitalization rate. That is a rate that's determined by all the surrounding sales that have gone on. So there's all these measurements that you can look at in advance to understand if the business plan and the returns are reasonable or realistic. So one of the things that people need to understand when they're going into this is the risks are it's a liquid.

You go to a company, you say, here's $100,000 and they're going to take that money and they're going to deploy it in their business venture. So you need to know what the investment time horizon is on that investment so that you're not asking them after a year, well, I need to get out. Yet the investment time horizon is five years because you can't get out. It's illiquid. Now, on some of the funds, they have redemption policies. And again, if you need liquidity, there are options that we have. So, to my thesis, Canada has unaffordable housing. It's one of the worst in the world.

One in four Canadians can afford to buy a home today. It's a problem. Yet Trudeau talks about we're not going to let house prices go down. Not sure how he's going to do that. Now, CMHC has just put out a report saying, it's a bond buying spurt. Why? Because now the government's offering all these programs. Those aren't free.

They have to come from somewhere. So now the bond traders are kind of shaking, wondering what's going to happen. The government policy is we're going to build affordable housing across Canada and we're going to do whatever it takes. We're going to densify. We're going to give money to developers. We're going to reduce GST costs. All of that's happening.

And as a company, we look at that as, an opportunity. Take advantage of government policy. Don't fight it because you won't win. Take advantage of it. So that's what we're doing. This is just, this is an interesting graph and I keep using it because it sort of explains what's happened. Since 2015, this is the price, income to price ratio for homes in Canada. Home prices since 2015 have risen in comparison to that income growth by 51%. that's one of these people can't afford houses. So what are they going to do? How are they going to fix it?

Well, they're going to throw money at it. These are just the most recent CMHC. Vancouver's hovering just around a 1% vacancy. And this is across all purpose built, rental, new build, old build, whatever. So these are shocking numbers. They're shocking. There's 1% vacancy is zero vacancy. There's nothing available.

And just talk to people. that are looking to rent places. It's declining. In 2022, there was the biggest drop in vacancy from the previous year. Now, they're saying it's insignificant from 2022 to 2023, but it did drop again. It went from 1.9 to 1.5. And rents surged in Vancouver and Toronto. Why? We have some of the highest immigration targets in the country, Q3, 2020, we let 430,000 people into our country. That was our entire year target. So they're starting to unravel what's happening. They're starting to do the talk, but the reality is it's out of control. It's really out of control and they don't have a plan for it. And they're trying desperately to buy votes.

So I'm going to touch on just to give you some practical idea of how we structure our deals. This is a 70-unit purpose-built rental in North Vancouver. Anyone know where North Vancouver is? Great. So this is in the city of North Vancouver. And so it's very central. We like the demographics, and I'm going to touch on them. Before I do that, there's a document.

And it tells you about all the assumptions. It tells you about all the risks you have. It tells you everything you need to know. And I do have all of my clients read that document, whether they want to or not. And surprisingly enough, lots of people don't. They don't have 10 questions for me. I'm not sure I want them as my client. You need to read this.

You need to understand what your risks are. And you also need to understand what the assumptions are and how you're going to make money. Again, all this is available for you to review prior to making any investment decision. because why? Every investment decision should be informed. And if you don't read it, you're not informed. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. And there are some unknowns. All of the financials that they do on their assumptions are based on today's knowledge. And we all know what just happened. We all know that interest rates went way up way faster than most people knew. So key investment highlights in why we like this deal. It's very de-risk.

As most of you know in the audience, you're looking at developments. How long do they take? How long does it take to get a development from start, rezoned, and finished? Probably anywhere from three to six years. This has all been removed on this deal. This has a development permit in place. They'll go to construction in August of 2024, unheard of. So it's, we know there's high rental demand. We're seeing those vacancy rates under 1%. And in North Vancouver, they're 0.6%. So they're even worse. Expedited timeline, very, very unusual to get involved in a development deal that's 30-month time horizon. Very, very. And one of the things that this developer knows is that there's a lot of uncertainty out there. So they've built in a lot of protection, fixed price contracting. They've got a

rate buy down protection. They've also got a cost overrun protection. So they're really protecting the clients. That's why we like this deal. It's located at 705th Street, 3rd Street, in North Vancouver, city of North Vancouver. So anyone know where the concert property is that's right on the water. It's about two blocks from that. So the walk score is very high.

The demand for that area because of its location to transit, Lawnsdale Keys like five minutes away. you've got your bikes, parks, ocean. It's very walkable. It's a beautiful area. And it's in transition. So the nice thing is it's in transition. It'll only get better, not worse,

because now all the new buildings are starting to happen, which we've all seen that happen in Vancouver. Brentwood. Talk about Brentwood. It's prime location. Again, Cap Mall is just down the road, on Stale Key 15 minutes away. So let's just touch on the demographics.

So in New Build, New Build. So the appraisal supports this. $3,500 a month is what people are renting in New Built for a two-bedroom. That's a wow for sure. I think CMHC is saying it's around 1900. But in New Build product, 80% of all rental property in North Vancouver is built in the 1980s. So you're renting in North Vancouver. Okay, let's go look at that.

It might be bigger because the older stuff is bigger, but it's very dated. And this is what's happening in this. on this side of the inlet is we're seeing a lot of new development coming in in areas that were never done before. Young population base, you know, when you're looking at, you know, under 50, that's considered young, young families, active lifestyle choices because you've got Whistler. And Whistler, because I live on the North Shore, is like an hour and 20 minutes, max. So it's very close to all the recreation. Key milestones on this deal are excavation starts in August.

And throughout the process, they expect to get occupancy in June of 2026. They're going to stabilize it. And they're going to exit and sell it to a real estate investment trust. And they've already got several that have expressed an interest. And part of a lot of developers today, they want to know, what do those guys want before we build it? So we make sure we build it to suit them. And then people ask, well, why wouldn't they sell it? Why wouldn't they do what they call a forward sale?

That's not in the best interest of it. investors because on a forward sale, they'll discount all the rental income so that they can get a better deal. So this developer has the wherewithal to be able to build the building, stabilize it for six months, and then put it on the market to sell to a real estate investment trust. Obviously, they'll start that process early once they start leasing. Obviously, they'll start leasing before they're completed. That's a little dicey because you always have to get occupancy, so you have to be careful with that. But the whole time horizon is 30 months. and that's you put your money in today,

and you'll get your money out in Q1 of 2027. These are the returns. Now, you'll see that there's returns that are a five-year exit, a 10-year exit. I call this a fallback position. Their goal is to sell unstabilization. Say the market, something happens. They can't sell.

Well, they'll run it as a rental building. As an investor, they'll refinance with takeout financing. You'll get paid back probably 80% of your equity. You'll still retain your interest and you'll get your share of income from the rental income. So the results are, okay, that doesn't happen. So now in five years, we've got to sell the building because they'll probably take out a longer mortgage. This is unlikely. I mean, there's a lot of demand for these at stabilization, but I like that there's a fallback position that makes sense. for my investors, and that's the only reason I bring it out. So this is the, that takes you to

everything you need to know about this deal. So if you take a picture of this, go to it, it's my website. Ultimately, you'll get all of the details. And I think we've got a video, a launch video, we've got all the documents, we make, we're very transparent. We want people to really dig into the information and ask all the questions before making a decision. But why I'm here today, I was a realtor and I got involved in investment real estate in 1992. And like Tony, I ended up having kids. And all I know is that my mother was horrified when she came to visit me after the birth of my premature daughter who was under the desk in a basket, sleeping because I figured, oh, well, I've got to finish this deal. I'll just take her to work.

Under she went and when my mom came to visit, she looked at me and said, are you crue? crazy. Like, I'm taking her home. Okay, off she went. So that's my story. When you talked about it, Tony, I said, oh, I have that same memory. So it is about creating boundaries. My boundaries were I didn't want to do real estate. I want to move into private equity. I have more control over my life. It's nine to five pretty much. No nights, weekends, open houses, all that. So this is my choice. Sorry, I don't have to head there. So we also work with a lot of realtors because you're out there. You're working with clients that love real estate. So for you to monetize your channel, we have developed a referral program. And I've taken it to a very high level and spent quite a bit of money and resources

to build this platform that allows you to make introductions and track all of those introductions. You'll get an email so-and-so clicked on her link and automatically, as soon as a transaction happens, money's deposited into your bank account when it closes. And I don't even have to touch it look at it. You don't have to fill out a form. You don't have to sign all these things. You sign one form and you're associated with our company. It's all legitimate. I've worked with several realtors. Happy to share the referrals with you. But it works. I can work with you direct if you're interested in doing this yourself. But really why I'm talking to realtors is monetize all that hard work you've done. Many of your clients will appreciate having the opportunity to look at these kinds of deals and

they will trust because you've introduced it. And so it makes, I'm happy to pay the referrals because it costs money to bring in clients. So that's my story. My story is invest differently and make your time worth it. Monetize your channel. And if you need more information, I put together a great campaign that drips all the details, keeps you in the loop so you can learn and you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to dig it out.

I've tried to be very educational because that's my job. I give back to this community. Thank you. Awesome. Well, that was fantastic, Cynthia. Thank you so much. That was amazing. And we were so honored to have you shared today.

Great. Folks, wasn't that great? My goodness. And so Cynthia has put her contact information here. I would strongly recommend that you reach out to her and take advantage of this amazing opportunity and information that she has to share with you. And does anyone have any questions or anything like that? that you like to ask.

Great. A question. We got a question. I love the fact that you said, my clients have to have 10 questions before I will work with them. Why is that, Cynthia? Hey, they have read the information.

They will have at least 10 questions. And it just tells me, you've actually taken the time to review the information, to understand it. I mean, if you don't ask questions, I guess you're really not that interested. And also, if you just decide to trust completely in me, I don't know every little bit about you. So it's really important that you understand. And that tells me that you've read it and you have questions and I'll help you understand it better.

That's fantastic. Well, thanks again. Thank you.